Review

This double CD set contains a very lengthy show. The full set of 31 songs without any edits is all here, and it's an audience recording, not a soundboard, so the sound is a bit distant and sounds a bit flat, but it's still very good, especially for an audience recording.

The show starts with World War II style air raid sirens, as the band walk on. It's quite effective, and blends quiet well with the opening song Broadway (London Calling you'll see has been relegated all the way down the setlist). Broadway here is an excellent version, much better than on the Bonds gig of 4th of June. Apparently the band found it difficult to perform live but they really do it great here, especially the build up near the end. An excellent version, and it leads nicely into One More Time, another favourite track of mine, which is also performed well. You'll notice the setlist is very heavy on Sandinista! tracks. Pleasing for me, and I think perhaps they played the best of Sandinista! on tour to promote the album (obviously) as it didn't do excellently in the charts. It was in fact the first Clash album to sell more in the US than the UK. The UK crowd here don't seem to mind, but you do hear a member of the crowd saying "They played Tommy Gun last week" or something similar. Being an audience recording the crowd chatter can get a bit intrusive at times, but it doesn't have that much of an effect, and it's quite of interesting hearing the people speak. The cheer when the band walk on is enthusiastic, so the band certainly weren't completely out of favour on this Radio Clash tour.

I find that this show does seem to drag on a tad at times. Sitting here listening to it I've noticed there doesn't seem to be any other standouts really. The performance of the band is very good, but not really up to the standard of the blistering gigs at Bonds, or a rough Clash show from '77 / '78. The band toured intensively throughout 1981 and by this stage they were losing steam, and the songs are just performed more as routine rather than with passion. There's hardly any banter in between songs, Joe rarely addresses the audience and none of the songs are extended. It's still a show to pick up though.

Guns Of Brixton has better performances elsewhere, as does White Man, but they're still very good. The first CD ends with a decent Ivan Meets G.I. Joe, and the 2nd CD (which has the majority of the show on it) starts with Junco Partner, then The Leader. You can see the Sandinista! influence here. As the show goes on, it's almost as if they have a 'Rope section. "Right, let's give 'em a few 'Rope tracks", and the odd '77 Clash rocker track is thrown in near the end as good old crowd pleasers. Also of interest here is the Graffiti rap by Futura 2000...

"This is a song about graffiti, sung by Futura 2000, and if you don't like it you can fucking shut your face 'til he's finished!"

...as Joe informs the audience. It's a great blast and a good live version of the song. Very funky. (The studio versions are on Rocker Station.) For these gigs Futura 2000 worked on the set spraying the backdrop while the band played. A couple of Combat Rock tracks are here. No Rock The Casbah as I think that was written later, but a great Know Your Rights and an equally professional Should I Stay Or Should I Go. These were unreleased at the time.

So overall it's a good show, with good quality and not really any bad points. Certainly one to acquire and if not for anything else for the sheer amount of material here. My main selling point for it would be the excellent rendition of Broadway though.

Rated: 8 / 10

Extra

I expect a soundboard version will exist somewhere in the vaults. But until that surfaces, this audience recording will do fine.

Thanks to Gaz Whelan for the copy of this.

Some feedback I received from Tim Walker:

...I've finally been able to listen to the whole of the London Lyceum show, and your review of this show on your website is spot on. A good, long show, but nothing outstanding. What I noticed about it most was the different intros used on a lot of the songs. I didn't recognize, for example, Junco Partner until Joe started singing it...